By Ivana Hrynkiw
al.com
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - The state of Alabama is set to execute another inmate just two months after having to call off an execution minutes before the death warrant was set to expire.
Kenneth Eugene Smith is set to die at William C. Holman Correctional Facility on November 17, according to an order from the Alabama Supreme Court.
Smith, now 57, will be executed for the slaying of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, a 45-year-old grandmother and pastor’s wife who was killed inside her north Alabama home. Her husband paid to have her killed.
In 1996, Smith was convicted of capital murder for his involvement in the killing. The jury in Smith’s case recommended 11 to 1 that he receive a life sentence without the possibility of parole, but the trial judge overrode the jury’s verdict and sentenced Smith to death.
If that situation unfolded in 2022, Smith would not be eligible for the death penalty. In 2017, Alabama amended its capital-sentencing laws to say a jury, not a judge, has the final say on whether to impose the death penalty in capital murder cases. The law did not allow for the new rule to be applied retroactively to prisoners already on death row.
According to a 2021 order from the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that detailed the crime, Reverend Charles Sennett, a minister in the Church of Christ, recruited Billy Williams to kill his wife. Williams then recruited Smith and another man named John Parker. In return for the killing, Charles Sennett agreed to pay each of the three men $1,000.
The plan was to kill Elizabeth Sennett in the family’s home and stage her killing as a burglary gone wrong, according to the court’s order.
Elizabeth Sennett was killed on March 18, 1988 inside her Colbert County home by Smith and his accomplices, according to the order. The county coroner testified during Smith’s trial that Elizabeth had been stabbed eight times in the chest and once on each side of the neck, and had also been beaten.
Smith also stole a video cassette recorder from the Sennett’s home and kept it in his Lauderdale County house. Law enforcement later found the VCR—a detail that has been argued in multiple of Smith’s appeals, which have focused on the validity of the search warrant used when the electronic was discovered.
“(Charles) Sennett was involved in an affair, had incurred substantial debts, and had taken a large insurance policy out on Elizabeth,” the appeals court’s order stated. “One week after the murder, when the murder investigation started to focus on him as a suspect, (Charles) Sennett committed suicide.”
Smith admitted his involvement in Elizabeth Sennett’s slaying to police, court records show, and was initially convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. That verdict, however, was overturned by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.
At his second trial, prosectors brought into evidence both Smith’s confession and the VCR. “Other than that, the State had little evidence supporting its case against Smith,” the 11th Circuit wrote.
Smith was again convicted of capital murder, but the second jury voted to recommend a life without parole sentence.
The judge disagreed, and handed down a death sentence.
Parker was executed in 2010.
In Smith’s confession, detailed in court records, Smith gave this account of the night of the murder:
“I knocked on the door and Mrs. Sennett came to the door. I told Mrs. Sennett that her husband had told us that we could come down and look around the property to see about hunting on it. Mrs. Sennett asked my name. I told her I was Kenny Smith. She went to the phone and called her husband and came back and told us it was okay to look around...
I stood at the edge of the kitchen talking with Mrs. Sennett. Mrs. Sennett was sitting at a chair in the den. Then I heard John coming through the house. John walked up behind Mrs. Sennett and started hitting her. John was hitting her with his fist. I started getting the VCR while John was beating Mrs. Sennett. John hit Mrs. Sennett with a large cane and anything else he could get his hands on. John went into a frenzy. Mrs. Sennett was yelling just stop, we could have anything we wanted.
As John was beating up Mrs. Sennett, I messed up some things in the house to make it look like a burglary. I took the VCR out to the car.
The last place I saw Mrs. Sennett she was lying near the fireplace covered with some kind of blanket... When John got back to the car we drove back to Billy’s apartment to get our money.”
Smith also said he did not stab Elizabeth Sennett. During his trial, Smith’s attorneys argued Smith participated in the attack, but did not intend to kill Elizabeth.
“[Smith] agreed... to go beat Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, to rough her up, to make it look like a robbery for fast cash. That is the terms they used. It was not to kill Mrs. Sennett. It was not to take her life. As shameful and as vile, it was nothing more or nothing less than to beat her up and to take [sic]. And that plan, what they agreed to... that as evil as that plan was, that is all it was.”